


The Poems John Writes (or, Normal, Independent Error)

by Bitenomnom



Series: Mathematical Proof [49]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (completely optional but let me dream okay), (what else is new?), Fluff, Gen, John is perfectly capable of solving cases on his own, John writes poetry, M/M, Mathematics, Pining, Post-Baskerville, Pre-Reichenbach, Sherlock invades John's privacy, vague Mystrade allusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 11:32:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitenomnom/pseuds/Bitenomnom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock was ready for a good laugh.	 </p><p>Luckily, he had at his disposal the emails John had sent to past girlfriends. John either seemed unaware of his ability to delete records of emails he’d sent, or else was too sentimental to do so. (Or maybe he planned on recycling his poems; that would be the pragmatic approach.) John had never really struck Sherlock as the poet sort, and once he’d read about two lines of one of his poems, Sherlock knew that there was a very good reason his gut had disagreed with the idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Poems John Writes (or, Normal, Independent Error)

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, god, so, I didn't even proofread this; I didn't even have time to think as I wrote it. I have a hundred things to finish before 3pm tomorrow and I should have gone to bed an hour ago. @_@ Still, I didn't want to chicken out on this so close to the end, so I tried writing something, er...well. Hopefully not too horrible, anyway. (Have you ever heard of slam poetry? I envision John's third quoted one being read out loud for optimal good-sounding-ness [like most/all poetry, obviously, but in this case particularly given its structure]. Try mouthing along with it. It probably seems at least marginally less stupid that way. Maybe. I dunno. It's 4:30am and the end of the semester; cut me some slack. XD) And I imagined this happening between Baskerville and Reichenbach but I suppose you could imagine it whenever you want.
> 
> Tomorrow, after I've turned in this paper and this assignment, I should have some time to sit down and write a proper...a...a proper...a...oh god, this series can't be coming to an end. ;_; Excuse me while I weep myself to sleep...
> 
> (I was going to ask you guys something tonight, but given that my next twelve hours will make or break my grade in one of these classes, I don't want to risk the possible distraction to come with it, so I think I'll hold off.)
> 
> EDIT: Oops, forgot to make this one a part of the series!

When using the ordered logit model (see [Latent Variable](http://archiveofourown.org/works/582480)), the error term in the model is the only random quantity. The ordered probit model is a variation in which you assume that the errors are independent standard normals, i.e. the mean is 0 and the variance is 1. Alternatively, the logit model is used for errors with a “logistic” distribution. In these ordered models, you relate the predictors to the cumulative probabilities rather than just individuals—for instance, if you have a ranking along a scale of “too small” to “too big,” you might be interested in finding the probability that a given observation fell somewhere in the range of “too small” to “just right.” Basically, you use the previously discussed latent variable to determine the ranges for which some observation would fall into a particular category, and then this model yields some normal distributions along the line created by the latent variable, so for some x, you can figure out how likely it is that it’ll fit in a certain category, or a certain range of categories. One limitation of this model is that you assume that the logistic equations are all parallel, which isn’t always true! But, taking away this restriction gives you a _lot_ of unknowns, so this is typically only done where there is a huge benefit to doing so.

***

            Sherlock was ready for a good laugh.

            He opened John’s laptop and peered in.

            He was ready for a good laugh, because he’d somehow managed to piss John off, and off John had gone, outside to “get some air.” He supposed it was one of those typical social convention things, something like he wasn’t supposed to have told Lestrade that based solely on past data, there was an 85% chance that whoever he dated after divorcing his wife would cheat on him, too.

            (Sherlock, of course, had no idea who Lestrade would be dating after divorcing his wife, and Lestrade intended to keep it that way for a while.)

            John had made some useless and illogical attempt at explaining to Sherlock what was bad about what he’d done, and Sherlock _got_ it, in theory, in the memorizing-the-rules sort of way, but that was different to John’s natural, effortless understanding of how such things worked. It was like playing Cluedo: John worked intuitively within the arbitrary framework provided by the rules, which Sherlock had a difficult time grasping, because they were just so _stupid_. A bit like the law, maybe, too, but at least John seemed to share in Sherlock’s willingness to ignore some of the more useless rules. He carried a firearm around, which had to be at least as bad as Sherlock barging in on crime scenes he wasn’t invited to.

            So Sherlock needed something to lift his mood a bit, because however little sense John’s huffing off made, it was still upsetting, like one’s arm falling asleep all full of pinpricks and completely unusable until one could shake some sense back into it.

            Luckily, he had at his disposal the emails John had sent to past girlfriends. John either seemed unaware of his ability to delete records of emails he’d sent, or else was too sentimental to do so. (Or maybe he planned on recycling his poems; that would be the pragmatic approach.) John had never really struck Sherlock as the poet sort, and once he’d read about two lines of one of his poems, Sherlock knew that there was a very good reason his gut had disagreed with the idea.

            _The hazel of your eyes is like maple syrup,_

_Sweet and perfect with breakfast,_

            He stopped, already feeling almost sick to his stomach, and continued on to the next.

 

 

 

            “I’m back,” John called out roughly five hours later, which was a bit longer than Sherlock expected _stepping out for some air_ to take. He’d probably gone to the pub, or maybe he’d called up whoever he was dating now hoping for a quick visit. (A quick shag, Sherlock thought wryly, although he couldn’t quite place why the idea of it bothered him; John was certainly entitled to whatever…stuff…he found to be so entertaining and worth so much of his time and effort.)

            “Ah,” Sherlock said.

            “Had a chat with Greg.”

            Greg? Who was—oh, right. Lestrade.

            “Ah.”

            “By the way, if you care at all, he knows that it was just you being you. He wasn’t as upset as he might’ve been.” John said it with his lips curled down slightly around his teeth—trying to hide something, then. Sherlock raised an eyebrow.

            “So,” Sherlock said, “not worth all that fuss that you put up about it after all.”

            John shrugged. “Better to apologize when you don’t need to than to find out you should have when it’s too late.”

            “That’s not very practical.”

            He rolled his eyes. “No, I suppose it’s not.”

            “You were gone for a while.”

            “Oh—yeah. Right. Well, after we talked a bit Greg showed me a few photos of a crime scene, see if I had any ideas about it.”

            Sherlock’s back straightened and he held out his hand.

            “What?”

            “I’ll take them now.” He looked to John, narrowing his eyes. “You haven’t brought them back with you. Where are they?”

            “At Scotland Yard, I’d expect,” John huffed down into the sofa, and grumbled when he realized that Sherlock was using his laptop. Rather than snatch it from him, John pulled up the newspaper to see what was on the telly tonight.

            “Why?”

            “ _Why_?” John repeated incredulously, but by now he was smirking.

            “Yes, why?”

            “Well, we solved it, that’s why.”

            “That’s why you were g—you were out solving a case without me?”

            John leaned back in his chair with a smug smile.

            Sherlock huffed and resumed his attention on John’s laptop. He adopted a mocking tone, and started, “ _As petals drift after they come unstuck, we lie listless after we f—_ ” he flushed. “That’s not even a reasonable metaphor!”

            John couldn’t restrain a laugh, which beat back his initial defensive bristle. Sherlock set the laptop aside quickly and curled up in the sofa.

            “Afraid that’s all you’ll get reading those,” John said, retrieving his laptop. “Bad metaphors and dirty language.” He shrugged. “But, they seem to like it.”

            “You have terrible taste, then,” Sherlock mumbled into the cushions. John shook his head, and opened up his blog to start an entry about the case he’d solved on his own today.

            After several minutes, Sherlock’s posture loosened, and he turned over to lie on his back. “Well done, by the way,” he said quietly. “Solving the case. You’ll have to tell me about it.”

            “Sure,” John said.

            “It can’t have been too interesting, if you and Lestrade solved it in less than four hours,” he added.

            John smiled, and began tapping at the keys. “I’m sure it was too boring for you,” he assuaged the man.

            “Quite right.”

 

 

 

            There was, though, one email that John had never sent off, Sherlock found several days later. He’d not even written the recipient’s name in, which Sherlock thought clever—that way, if he accidentally sent it off, it wouldn’t arrive half-finished. He knew immediately, though, that this was another of John’s godawful poems to his girlfriends, because he always changed the font color in those to purple. Sherlock liked to assume that that was for some sort of filing purpose, or to make sure to catch his eye before he sent them off, rather than that John honestly believed his girlfriends would like the poems better if they were also written in some sort of attractive color.

            This one, though, did not bear the line breaks typical to the rest of John’s poetry. Unfinished, maybe. He’d meant to sent it off to Jeanette, or someone, but then they’d broken up. The differing structure was interesting, though: perhaps he’d tried a new method. Maybe this one would be a little _less_ awful.

            _I hope you know that I’m not trying to slow you down, you arse, smarter than is good for anybody._

Sherlock paused. Maybe not to Jeanette. John didn’t speak to his girlfriends like this.

            _But, see, you and me, for all we don’t speak and for all my clothes came out reeking for weeks on end after that fake tattoo experiment, I think we work pretty well. And don’t say ‘we do too speak’ because you know what I mean, I mean about the things that sting us a little bit, and things from the pits of us, from our bellies and chests, and maybe ‘best friend’ doesn’t begin to say it, which I think is why we don’t. I won’t push it, and moments where I could have mostly broke down before I could seize them. I’ve heard if you love someone you have to free him, and I see we’re neither of us like that, grabbing at each other and scratching in with our nails—because I’ve seen the way you look at my girlfriends and I know the reasons my relationships fail, and it’s you, but it’s me, too, grabbing at you. You don’t think I do it, but I do, or have the little marks from my fingers on your coattails eluded you? And if that’s not enough, the other stuff I’d do—give me anyone and I’ll punch his lights out, if the dunce thinks he can rip me from you (as if one could take the bright out of the sun). So maybe it’s better like this, no kissing or listing aloud the things I’d miss from you until I got blisters in my throat, and I guess doting is the last thing you’d wish for; what’s more, even if I could ignore the sort of roaring coring my guts in the name of love and lust, I can’t justify assuming you’d just board this bus to god-knows-where with me. Probably, you’d be uninterested; must be that I’m not your area, and that’s okay. Anyway, day by day it works out fine, and even if you’re not mine, the porcupine in me knows I’ll be curled up all spines with you safe by my belly, watching the telly and the world outside—and then, a homicide! Put on your coat; I’m along for the ride._

            Sherlock conveyed the laptop out to the sitting room slowly, folding it shut as he returned it to its place.

            When John returned from work, he made himself a cuppa and flopped down into his chair, pulling the laptop up close and opening it. He blinked. “That…that was supposed to…I deleted that,” he said through a dry throat.

            Sherlock had actually restored the email from John’s trash. “Error, maybe,” he mumbled over his microscope.

            John set the laptop back down, staring at Sherlock and then abruptly becoming aware of what he was doing, and glancing around the room before resolving to look back to Sherlock. “You read it, didn’t you?”

            “Yes,” Sherlock said, pulling out his mobile to check his texts. “Luckily, I seem to have been its intended recipient.”

            John was silent.

            “I…” Sherlock started to say, at the same time as John said,

            “I already know what your opinion is going to b—”

            “The porcupine metaphor would be more appropriate if you actually let me lie on your belly,” Sherlock interrupted, scrolling through his text messages.

            “Right,” John said, taken aback.

            “Lestrade’s got a case for us,” Sherlock said, and when he looked up, John was already fetching his jacket.

            “What is it?”

            “Triple homicide.”

           And Sherlock put on his coat.


End file.
